Fardapaper-Research-in-Production-and-Operations-Management-A-University-Based-Bibliometric-Analysis

Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management https://doi.org/10.1007/s40171-018-0201-0 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Research in Production and Operations Management: A University-Based Bibliometric Analysis Jose´ M Merigo´1,2 • Claudio Muller1 • Nikunja Mohan Modak3 • Sigifredo Laengle1 Received: 21 July 2018 / Accepted: 22 October 2018 Ó Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management 2018 Abstract Universities across the world are contributing greatly to production and operations management (POM) research and playing significant roles in social and economic development This article analyzes the performance of universities in POM research and development between 1990 and 2014 The Web of Science core collection database is used to collect all the necessary data The results show a wide diversity among the countries of origin of the top universities, with some of them being in Asia, Europe, and North America These results are quite different from many other management areas where English-speaking countries, especially the USA, tend to be dominant Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the most productive university, while Michigan State University is the most influential one Time-based evolution reveals that the USA previously had a more dominant position, while now there is more distribution of top universities around the world The analysis of selected & Nikunja Mohan Modak nikunja.modak@gmail.com Jose´ M Merigo´ jmerigo@fen.uchile.cl Claudio Muller cmuller@fen.uchile.cl Sigifredo Laengle slaengle@fen.uchile.cl Department of Management Control and Information Systems, School of Economics and Business, University of Chile, Av Diagonal Paraguay 257, 8330015 Santiago, Chile School of Information, Systems and Modelling, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, 81 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia Palpara Vidyamandir, Chakdaha, West Bengal 741222, India journals indicates that many journals tend to be more influenced by their respective countries of origin However, other journals show a more general profile by publishing papers from most of the countries around the world Keywords Bibliometrics Á Production and operations management Á University analysis Á Web of science Introduction Universities have been idealistically viewed as sources of innovation that generate new ideas by conducting and publishing research Universities are playing an important role as a primary source of knowledge creation and talent New discoveries help to increase the eminence of universities The pursuit of eminence is reflected in academic publications During the last century, the number of universities has increased substantially, which has been especially motivated by economic improvements and high growth rates of the population Especially, this increase in the number of universities has been very significant during the last decades Universities across the world are contributing greatly toward social and economic development to strengthen their respective nations’ roles in the global marketplace Successful regional economies such as the region around Cambridge in the UK, the Boston area and Silicon Valley are providing examples of universities’ contributions to regional economic growth Companies such as Cisco, Google, and Yahoo also originated from university (Stanford University) research (Veugelers and Del Rey 2014) These success stories have helped to uphold the roles of universities in regional and national economic growth A number of techniques are used in the library and information science literature for measuring the 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Most productive and influential universities in POM R University Country TP Hong Kong Polytechnic University CHN 738 Penn State University USA 509 Arizona State University USA 509 National University of Singapore SGP 475 6773 37 14.26 16 Michigan State University USA 421 12,471 57 29.62 26 64 City University of Hong Kong CHN 394 4954 33 12.57 15 Purdue University USA 369 7159 41 19.40 11 33 University of Michigan USA 361 6318 38 17.50 10 27 University of Manchester UK 349 5853 39 16.77 29 10 Georgia Institute of Technology USA 331 7534 44 22.76 18 36 11 12 University of Minnesota Twin Cities Cardiff University USA UK 319 317 10,395 5712 55 37 32.59 18.02 26 60 27 13 Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA 315 9931 49 31.53 20 47 14 Cranfield University UK 313 4670 30 14.92 14 15 Erasmus University Rotterdam NET 310 6733 41 21.72 12 31 16 Eindhoven University of Technology NET 310 5020 37 16.19 24 17 University of Hong Kong CHN 307 4674 33 15.22 14 18 Loughborough University UK 307 3091 26 10.07 19 Texas A M University College Station USA 305 5551 38 18.20 29 20 National Cheng Kung University TWN 299 3039 29 10.16 21 University of Nottingham UK 296 4388 32 14.82 16 22 Shanghai Jiao Tong University CHN 294 2177 21 7.40 23 Nanyang Technological University SGP 292 4303 32 14.74 20 24 University of Montreal CAN 288 4168 32 14.47 18 25 National Chiao Tung University TWN 288 3918 29 13.60 14 26 Ohio State University USA 277 8228 43 29.70 18 33 27 28 University of Maryland College Park University of Warwick USA UK 273 257 5921 3601 39 30 21.69 14.01 11 28 15 29 Polytechnic University of Milan ITA 249 3135 28 12.59 13 30 Virginia Polytechnic Institute USA 248 4885 38 19.70 10 23 31 Iowa State University USA 246 4297 31 17.47 15 32 University of Groningen NET 243 2350 23 9.67 33 University of California Berkeley USA 242 5027 34 20.77 21 34 Hong Kong University of Science Technology CHN 242 4742 35 19.60 20 35 National Taiwan U of Science and Technology TWN 226 2431 23 10.76 10 36 Monash University AUS 223 2647 29 11.87 37 Linkoping University SWE 223 2953 30 13.24 38 Tsinghua University CHN 221 2026 23 9.17 39 National Tsing Hua University TWN 219 2233 25 10.20 40 Chinese University of Hong Kong CHN 214 3612 34 16.88 18 41 University of Texas Austin USA 212 4795 39 22.62 23 42 43 University of Cambridge University of Arkansas Fayetteville UK USA 208 208 4569 2524 37 25 21.97 12.13 22 10 44 Rutgers State University USA 206 3118 28 15.14 16 45 University of Florida USA 205 3486 29 17.00 12 46 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Tech KOR 204 2915 26 14.29 47 University of Tennessee Knoxville USA 195 3334 29 17.10 17 48 KU Leuven BEL 195 3442 30 17.65 13 123 TC H C/P C100 C50 9941 43 13.47 6394 35 12.56 10 17 11,865 53 23.31 21 55 33 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table continued R University Country TP 49 Stanford University USA 194 50 North Carolina State University USA 194 TC H C/P C100 C50 6909 38 35.61 15 30 4679 35 24.21 11 23 R Rank, TP total papers, TC total cites, H H-index, C/P cites per paper; C 100, C 50 = Articles with more than 100 and 50 cites, respectively Table Ranking of the Top 50 universities in POM according to the Total Citations, the H-index and the Citations per paper R Total citation H-index Citation per paper Michigan State U Michigan State U U Pennsylvania Arizona State U U Minnesota Twin Cities Harvard U U Pennsylvania Arizona State U U North Carolina Chapel Hill U Minnesota Twin Cities MIT INSEAD Business School Hong Kong Polytechnic U U Pennsylvania Stanford U MIT Georgia Institute of Tech Carnegie Mellon U Ohio State U Hong Kong Polytechnic U U Western Ontario Georgia Institute of Tech Ohio State U Columbia U Purdue U Purdue U U Minnesota Twin Cities 10 Harvard U Erasmus U Rotterdam MIT 11 12 Stanford U U North Carolina Chapel Hill U North Carolina Chapel Hill U Manchester Ohio State U U California Los Angeles 13 National U Singapore U Maryland College Park Michigan State U 14 Erasmus U Rotterdam U Texas Austin Northwestern U 15 Penn State U U Michigan North Carolina State U 16 U Michigan Texas A M U College Station Arizona State U 17 U Maryland College Park Virginia Polytechnic Institute Georgia Institute of Tech 18 U Manchester Stanford U U Texas Austin 19 Cardiff U Harvard U U Cambridge 20 Texas A M U College Station National U Singapore Erasmus U Rotterdam 21 INSEAD Business School Cardiff U U Maryland College Park 22 U California Berkeley Eindhoven U Technology U Southern California 23 Eindhoven U Technology U Cambridge Northeastern U 24 City U Hong Kong INSEAD Business School U California Berkeley 25 Virginia Polytechnic Ins Penn State U SUNY Buffalo 26 U Western Ontario Hong Kong U Science Tech Virginia Polytechnic Ins 27 28 U Texas Austin Hong Kong U Sci Tech North Carolina State U U California Berkeley Hong Kong U Science Tech Purdue U 29 North Carolina State U Chinese U Hong Kong Auburn U 30 U Hong Kong City U Hong Kong U Illinois Urbana Champaign 31 Cranfield U U Hong Kong Texas A M U College Station 32 Carnegie Mellon U U Western Ontario Clemson U 33 U Cambridge Carnegie Mellon U Cardiff U 34 Columbia U U Nottingham U Texas Dallas 35 U Nottingham Nanyang Technological U KU Leuven 36 Nanyang Technological U U Montreal U Michigan 37 Iowa State U Clemson U Iowa State U 38 Northwestern U Cornell U Cornell U 39 U Montreal U Southern California U Tennessee Knoxville 40 U California Los Angeles Iowa State U U Florida 41 National Chiao Tung U Rensselaer Polytechnic Ins Chinese U Hong Kong 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table continued R Total citation H-index Citation per paper 42 43 U Southern California Columbia U U Manchester Auburn U Cranfield U U Toronto 44 Chinese U Hong Kong U Warwick Kansas State U 45 U Warwick Linkoping U Eindhoven U Technology 46 U Florida KU Leuven U Wisconsin Madison 47 Clemson U Auburn U U Melbourne 48 KU Leuven U Illinois Urbana Champaign Rensselaer Polytechnic Ins 49 U Tennessee Knoxville Lancaster U U Waterloo 50 U Illinois Urbana Champaign U California Los Angeles U Pittsburgh Table Leading universities in production and operations management between 1990 and 1994 R University TP TC H C/P Purdue University 56 1670 23 29.82 University of North Carolina 55 1244 18 22.62 Penn State University 54 1054 16 19.52 Ohio State University 40 1283 14 32.08 United States Department of Defense Texas A M University College Station 38 36 139 733 14 3.66 20.36 University of Michigan 32 952 15 29.75 National University of Singapore 32 390 12 12.19 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 32 1957 15 61.16 10 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 32 459 13 14.34 11 University of Minnesota Twin Cities 31 1105 17 35.65 12 University of Manchester 31 407 13.13 13 AT&T 31 191 6.16 14 University of Maryland College Park 29 934 14 32.21 15 Louisiana State University 29 388 12 13.38 16 Eindhoven University of Technology 29 387 10 13.34 17 North Carolina State University 28 720 14 25.71 18 Arizona State University 28 1808 14 64.57 19 University of Wisconsin Madison 27 483 13 17.89 20 21 University of Iowa Tel Aviv University 27 27 998 311 17 11 36.96 11.52 22 New Jersey Institute of Technology 26 239 10 9.19 23 Loughborough University 26 311 11 11.96 24 International Business Machines(IBM) 26 426 16.38 25 Nanyang Technological University 25 312 12.48 26 Iowa State University 25 838 12 33.52 27 Concordia University Canada 25 347 13.88 28 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 23 437 19.00 29 University of Texas Austin 22 595 11 27.05 30 Indian Institute of Technology Madras 22 867 15 39.41 performance of universities/institutions in the production of scientific research Bibliometrics is one of them, and it is defined as the science that quantitatively studies bibliographic materials (Broadus 1987) Bibliometric studies 123 initiated in the field of library and information sciences Since its inception, it has been applied in different fields (Podsakoff et al 2008) Bibliometrics has been applied to analyze different research areas, including supply chain Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in production and operations management between 1995 and 1999 R University University of North Carolina 97 3395 28 35.00 Purdue University 88 2308 27 26.23 Penn State University 81 1168 18 14.42 University of Manchester 78 1335 19 17.12 Arizona State University 67 1851 25 27.63 City University of Hong Kong 54 886 16 16.41 University of Nottingham 52 1313 19 25.25 University of Michigan 50 1682 20 33.64 University of Warwick 48 938 17 19.54 10 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 48 693 15 14.44 11 12 National University of Singapore Monash University 47 46 739 603 18 15 15.72 13.11 13 University of Wisconsin Madison 45 648 13 14.40 14 Nanyang Technological University 45 693 15 15.40 15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 45 2473 21 54.96 16 Iowa State University 45 1148 16 25.51 17 Texas A M University College Station 43 1126 19 26.19 18 Eindhoven University of Technology 43 951 18 22.12 19 University of California Berkeley 41 1596 20 38.93 20 University of Texas Austin 39 1426 15 36.56 21 University of Maryland College Park 39 1337 16 34.28 22 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 39 572 14 14.67 23 Loughborough University 39 284 7.28 24 University of Southern California 38 1129 15 29.71 25 Erasmus University Rotterdam 38 1856 14 48.84 26 Rutgers State University 37 1279 18 34.57 27 28 Polytechnic University of Milan Michigan State University 37 37 896 1717 18 22 24.22 46.41 29 Brunel University 37 546 11 14.76 30 Virginia Polytechnic Institute 36 1173 17 32.58 management (Gonza´lez-Benito et al 2013; Boehmke and Hazen 2017), operations research and management science (Shang et al 2015; Merigo´ and Yang 2017; Laengle et al 2017, 2018a), economics (Bonilla et al 2015), health economics (Wagstaff and Culyer 2012), fuzzy research (Blanco-Mesa et al 2017; Merigo´ et al 2015a), innovation (Merigo´ et al 2016; Haleem et al 2018), manufacturing strategy (Kulkarni et al 2016), sustainability (Franceschini et al 2016), radio frequency identification (Musa and Dabo 2016), entrepreneurship (Landstroăm et al 2012), natural resources (Zhong et al 2016), and closed-loop supply chain and reverse logistics (Kazemi et al 2018) POM is considered an important tool for economic growth POM addresses planning, organizing, directing and controlling production and services to achieve higher efficiency and cost-effectiveness Since 1940, production management has drawn significant attention from the TP TC H C/P managers/researchers focused on economic efficiency in manufacturing In the 1970s, a shift in the service and manufacturing sectors emerged through the new name operations management Economists, mathematicians, social scientists and computer socialists contributed newer, more sophisticated analytical approaches in the field of POM to achieve firms’ objectives, increase goodwill, optimize the utilization of resources, minimize production costs, generate employment and boost the economy There are many bibliometric studies in production and operations management Some of them focused on the most significant journals in the field, including Goh et al (1997) and Barman et al (2001) They extended the analysis developed previously by other studies (Barman et al 1991) More recently, Holsapple and Lee-Post (2010) developed a behavioral-based analysis of journals in this discipline, and Stonebraker et al (2012) focused on the impact factor as a 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in production and operations management between 2000 and 2004 R University University of North Carolina 128 4849 33 37.88 Arizona State University 104 4145 34 39.86 CNRS France 101 1709 21 16.92 Penn State University 100 1254 19 12.54 Hong Kong Polytechnic University 97 2297 29 23.68 Michigan State University 93 5129 37 55.15 National University of Singapore 92 2577 26 28.01 City University of Hong Kong 85 1365 22 16.06 University of Manchester 78 2110 27 27.05 10 Eindhoven University of Technology 76 2070 25 27.24 11 12 Purdue University Loughborough University 72 72 2122 1057 21 18 29.47 14.68 13 University of Minnesota Twin Cities 68 4050 36 59.56 14 University of Hong Kong 67 1832 24 27.34 15 Virginia Polytechnic Institute 62 1696 21 27.35 16 University of Michigan 61 1613 22 26.44 17 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 61 3574 27 58.59 18 University of Maryland College Park 60 1692 23 28.20 19 Nanyang Technological University 59 1495 21 25.34 20 Cardiff University 59 2367 26 40.12 21 Cranfield University 58 1899 20 32.74 22 Iowa State University 57 988 17 17.33 23 University of Warwick 56 1160 20 20.71 24 New Jersey Institute of Technology 54 695 14 12.87 25 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 53 1225 21 23.11 26 Polytechnic University of Milan 53 1037 18 19.57 27 28 Hong Kong University of Science Technology University of Cambridge 53 52 2043 1771 27 26 38.55 34.06 29 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 52 1065 19 20.48 30 University of Nottingham 51 1183 18 23.20 tool for measuring the quality of journals Malaviya and Wadhwa (2005) executed an empirical study on organizational innovation management Garg and Singh (2006) presented an exhaustive review of the literature concerning change in organizational management Grover and Kar (2017) analyzed the research on big data published in highquality business management journals Ketchen and Hult (2007) showed the application potential of organizational theory to the field of supply chain management and highlighted the research gaps in these fields in order to improve the understanding of why some supply chains are better than others Wong and Lai (2011) studied the best publication outlets of POM research under different categories between 1998 and 2009 Some other authors focused on other issues, including the work of Pilkington and Meredith (2009) that developed a citation analysis in order to study 123 TP TC H C/P the evolution of operations management between 1980 and 2006 Hsieh and Chang (2009) presented a general overview of production and operations management by studying the publications of twenty leading journals in this field This work developed a university ranking between 1973 and 2008 and found that Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology were at the top Only three institutions in the Top 20 were from outside the USA Although this study represents an important contribution to the field, it needs improvements because the twenty journals that were considered may not strictly represent the discipline The main reason for this is because many journals have a broader perspective by publishing papers outside the core of production and operations management Therefore, the results may be conditioned by this issue From a general perspective, the results clearly Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in production and operations management between 2005 and 2009 R University Hong Kong Polytechnic University 203 4781 36 23.55 CNRS France 188 2226 21 11.84 University of North Carolina 161 4249 32 26.39 Arizona State University 161 3045 29 18.91 National University of Singapore 126 2003 25 15.90 Michigan State University 122 4089 38 33.52 Penn State University 113 2287 26 20.24 University of Hong Kong 106 1936 24 18.26 Georgia Institute of Technology 105 2991 31 28.49 10 City University of Hong Kong 103 1617 22 15.70 11 12 National Cheng Kung University Cranfield University 101 96 1401 1474 20 21 13.87 15.35 13 University of Manchester 95 1755 24 18.47 14 Erasmus University Rotterdam 91 2086 25 22.92 15 University of Montreal 90 1711 25 19.01 16 University of Minnesota Twin Cities 90 3245 31 36.06 17 University of Michigan 90 1462 22 16.24 18 Cardiff University 90 1359 22 15.10 19 National Chiao Tung University 83 1666 21 20.07 20 Texas A M University College Station 81 1518 22 18.74 21 Loughborough University 80 1096 18 13.70 22 Nanyang Technological University 78 1474 19 18.90 23 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 76 1062 16 13.97 24 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 73 1505 22 20.62 25 University of California Berkeley 69 1655 20 23.99 26 Ohio State University 69 1713 23 24.83 27 28 University of Nottingham University of Bath 68 68 1032 1000 17 19 15.18 14.71 29 Eindhoven University of Technology 66 1205 18 18.26 30 Purdue University 65 761 15 11.71 overestimated the prominence of the USA because older journals such as Management Science and Operations Research are totally dominated by this country However, the problem is that these journals not only publish papers in production and operations management, and so the results are affected by this issue An example of this can be seen in the ranking of authors, where many authors that are more oriented to the general field of operations research rather than to production and operations management appear in the list To solve this issue, this paper aims to present a more general approach that can clearly represent the field of production and operations management in a more complete way Particularly, this study provides a general overview of the leading universities in this field between 1990 and 2014 To so, we present a ranking of the fifty most productive and influential universities We identify the 50 TP TC H C/P best universities according to the total citations, H-index and citations per paper We also consider an evolution in order to see how their influence and productivity has changed throughout time The article also considers the most productive institutions in twenty-two selected journals Finally, the paper demonstrates a graphical visualization of bibliographic coupling using the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer software (Van Eck and Waltman 2010) This mapping analysis is carried out with bibliographic coupling (Kessler 1963) and co-author and co-citation analysis (Small 1973) The next section discusses the methodology of the present bibliometric study ‘‘Results’’ section demonstrates the results of the bibliometric exploration Using quantitative and qualitative indicators, this section depicts the leading universities in POM Moreover, the section depicted the top institutions in twenty-two wellestablished POM journals Finally, ‘‘Conclusions’’ 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in production and operations management between 2010 and 2014 R University TP TC H Hong Kong Polytechnic University 401 2617 24 6.53 CNRS France 359 1477 17 4.11 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 193 781 13 4.05 University of North Carolina 186 955 15 5.13 National University of Singapore 178 1087 17 6.11 Penn State University 161 653 12 4.06 Michigan State University 151 1173 19 7.77 Arizona State University 149 1045 14 7.01 City University of Hong Kong 144 1006 17 6.99 10 National Cheng Kung University 131 641 13 4.89 11 12 Georgia Institute of Technology University of Michigan 129 128 641 622 12 12 4.97 4.86 13 University of Montreal 125 608 13 4.86 14 Tsinghua University 124 566 10 4.56 15 Erasmus University Rotterdam 123 559 11 4.54 16 University of Groningen 120 436 10 3.63 17 Cranfield University 119 676 14 5.68 18 University of Arkansas Fayetteville 116 395 12 3.41 19 Cardiff University 113 517 11 4.58 20 National Chiao Tung University 110 502 11 4.56 21 University of Tehran 107 503 12 4.70 22 University of Nottingham 106 579 11 5.46 23 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 104 449 12 4.32 24 University of Hong Kong 102 541 12 5.30 25 National Tsing Hua University 101 497 4.92 26 Xi An Jiaotong University 98 740 12 7.55 27 28 Texas A M University College Station University of Minnesota Twin Cities 98 97 478 639 12 14 4.88 6.59 29 National Taiwan U Science tech 96 380 11 3.96 30 Eindhoven University of Technology 96 413 10 4.30 Fig Temporal Performance of the Top universities Fig Temporal analysis of the universities of the USA, Europe and Asia in the Top 30 positions 123 C/P Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in the International Journal of Production Research R University CNRS France 152 1022 15 6.72 Purdue University 118 2545 28 21.57 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 112 593 12 5.29 Penn State University 112 1142 18 10.20 Hong Kong Polytechnic University 106 866 16 8.17 Nanyang Technological University 105 1366 20 13.01 National University of Singapore 100 1561 24 15.61 Loughborough University 95 1089 18 11.46 University of Hong Kong 86 1380 21 16.05 10 University of North Carolina 80 1156 19 14.45 11 12 National Chiao Tung University Arizona State University 73 71 719 1021 15 17 9.85 14.38 13 University of Groningen 62 444 11 7.16 14 National Tsing Hua University 61 631 13 10.34 15 University of Calgary 60 996 19 16.60 16 City University of Hong Kong 59 918 15 15.56 17 Texas A M University College Station 57 836 15 14.67 18 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 57 841 18 14.75 19 Tel Aviv University 55 546 14 9.93 20 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi 54 661 14 12.24 21 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 52 797 13 15.33 22 Yuan Ze University 51 525 11 10.29 23 University of Nottingham 50 590 13 11.80 24 Tsinghua University 50 389 10 7.78 25 Michigan State University 50 737 16 14.74 26 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 48 583 16 12.15 27 28 University of Michigan National Cheng Kung University 47 47 491 352 13 11 10.45 7.49 29 Indian Institute of Technology Madras 45 1137 19 25.27 30 Hanyang University 45 360 11 8.00 Section sums up the major findings and conclusions of the paper Methods This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) database in order to collect the information for the bibliometric analysis The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is produced the WoS database Currently, it is maintained by Clarivate Analytics Previously, it was owned by the intellectual property and science business of Thomson and Reuters The database includes more than 15,000 journals and 50,000,000 papers classified in 251 subject categories and 151 subject areas The data for the present bibliometric study were collected between April and May 2015 To search for the material, we used a double search process TP TC H C/P between keywords and journals The keywords selected are as follows: operations management, production management, supply chain management, total quality management, TQM, logistics, MRP, and JIT The journals that were selected for the analysis were complimentary to the keywords by using the Boolean ‘‘OR’’ so that all the materials that were found with the keywords or the journals were considered The search process finds 51,015 articles in this field The study considers a time period of twenty-five years between 1990 and 2014 The present study considers different types of bibliometric indicators in order to present a comprehensive representation of the bibliographic information It uses the quantitative indicator of the total number of publications to provide information about the productivity of the universities On the other hand, it uses qualitative indicators such as the total numbers of citations, 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table Leading universities in the International Journal of Production Economics R University TP TC H C/P Hong Kong Polytechnic University 170 2647 29 15.57 CNRS France 122 1717 22 14.07 Eindhoven University of Technology 90 1076 19 11.96 Linkoping University 87 1537 24 17.67 University of Nottingham 76 1735 20 22.83 Lappeenranta University of Technology 66 1009 19 15.29 University of Groningen 64 909 16 14.20 University of North Carolina 55 784 16 14.25 Cardiff University 55 1650 21 30.00 10 City University of Hong Kong 48 607 14 12.65 11 12 Corvinus University of Budapest National University of Singapore 45 44 257 470 13 5.71 10.68 13 Concordia University Canada 42 829 14 19.74 14 Polytechnic University of Milan 41 653 18 15.93 15 National Chiao Tung University 38 891 14 23.45 16 Erasmus University Rotterdam 38 607 13 15.97 17 Nanyang Technological University 37 375 13 10.14 18 Louisiana State University 37 567 12 15.32 19 University of Montreal 36 562 12 15.61 20 Ryerson University 36 640 16 17.78 21 Chung Yuan Christian University 36 640 13 17.78 22 Lancaster University 34 485 14 14.26 23 Cranfield University 34 434 12 12.76 24 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 33 447 11 13.55 25 Aarhus University 33 258 10 7.82 26 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 32 414 12 12.94 27 28 Penn State University University of Twente 31 30 210 300 10 6.77 10.00 29 Tsinghua University 30 425 11 14.17 30 Ku Leuven 30 424 12 14.13 the citations per paper, the H-index (Hirsch 2005), and some citation thresholds to measure the eminence of the research works of universities The H-index reflects both the number of publications and citations simultaneously (Hirsch 2005) A university will get an H-index of P if it has P papers that have received P citations or more The H-index is one of the most common and accepted indicators to assess the performance of a university or a journal (Laengle et al 2018b, c; Mas-Tur et al 2018) Five thousand of the most cited papers are used to map the bibliographic material of the leading universities Graphical visualizations of the bibliographic coupling, cocitations and co-authors of the leading universities are prepared through the VOS viewer software (Van Eck and Waltman 2010) Two documents are bibliographically coupled if both documents cite one or more documents in 123 common (Valenzuela et al 2017) Bibliographic coupling helps researchers come across related research done in the past If two documents receive a citation from a third document, then both documents get a co-citation (Small 1973) index On the other hand, the indicator co-authorship represents the connectivity of the authors from different universities The maps are prepared based on the two standardized weights of each item One weight is the number of links of an item The other weight is the total strength of the links of an item (Cancino et al 2017; Martı´nez-Lo´pez et al 2018) The size of a circle in the network of the graphical representations denotes its relevance The size of a circle increases (or decreases) according to the superior (or inferior) performance of the university representing that circle On the other hand, Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 14 IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management R Institution National University of Singapore 44 423 12 9.61 New Jersey Institute of Technology 39 383 12 9.82 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 31 890 14 28.71 Michigan State University 30 632 16 21.07 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 28 344 11 12.29 City University of Hong Kong 28 348 12 12.43 Rutgers State University 27 181 6.70 University of North Carolina 26 477 11 18.35 Penn State University 26 172 6.62 10 Georgia State University 24 615 13 25.63 11 12 Rutgers State University Newark University of Arkansas Fayetteville 23 21 127 201 5.52 9.57 13 Portland State University 21 82 3.90 14 University of Michigan 20 468 11 23.40 15 Northeastern University 19 531 11 27.95 16 Arizona State University 19 299 15.74 17 University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 18 395 10 21.94 18 University of Texas Austin 17 169 9.94 19 University of Southern California 17 330 19.41 20 George Washington University 16 80 5.00 21 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee 14 167 11.93 22 University of Manchester 14 125 8.93 23 Texas AM University College Station 14 74 5.29 24 University of Waterloo 13 226 17.38 25 University of Maryland College Park 13 245 18.85 26 United States Department of Defense 13 289 22.23 27 28 Iowa State University Drexel University 12 12 167 337 13.92 28.08 29 Carleton University 12 184 15.33 30 Virginia Polytechnic Institute 11 193 17.55 are presented including the total citations, the H-index and the citations per paper CNRS France is the most productive and influential institution in this journal between 1990 and 2014 Purdue University also presents remarkable results with highest H-index Sixteen Asian universities appear in the list Only nine universities are from the USA, and one is from the UK Next, let us look into the International Journal of Production Economics The results are shown in Table Hong Kong Polytechnic University leads this ranking, which is far greater than the second position obtained by the Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) This journal is mainly led by European institutions, thirteen of which are in the Top 30 Ten Asian universities appear in the list, and only three are from the USA TP TC H TC/TP Table 10 presents the results for the Journal of Operations Management Note that this journal and the next one have a closer orientation to the management field, while the previous two are closer to engineering and operations research Michigan State University is the leading university in this journal It is worth noting that the first nine universities are from the USA, while the tenth one is from Canada This journal is totally led by USA institutions with twenty-five in the Top 30 Two UK universities appear in the list, and only two are from Asia These results clearly prove the dominant position that American universities have in the field of management Finally, let us look into the International Journal of Operations and Production Management The results appear in Table 11 Note that this journal is from Europe 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 15 Production, Planning and Control R Institution TP TC H TC/TP CNRS France 54 340 10 6.30 Polytechnic University of Milan 46 369 12 8.02 Eindhoven University of Technology 25 295 10 11.80 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 22 152 6.91 Hong Kong Polytechnic University 21 148 7.05 Aalborg University 20 91 4.55 University of Strathclyde 19 126 6.63 National University of Ireland Galway 18 279 15.50 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi 18 129 7.17 10 Cardiff University 18 205 11.39 11 12 Aalto University Polytechnic University of Valencia 17 16 164 84 6 9.65 5.25 13 King Fahd University of Petroleum Minerals 16 110 6.88 14 City University of Hong Kong 16 147 9.19 15 University of Trondheim 15 0.53 16 Pohang University of Science Technology 15 141 9.40 17 Monash University 15 132 8.80 18 University of Nottingham 14 107 7.64 19 University of Manchester 14 307 21.93 20 PRES University of Toulouse 14 84 6.00 21 Linkoping University 14 124 8.86 22 Chung Yuan Christian University 14 233 16.64 23 Aston University 14 32 2.29 24 National Cheng Kung University 13 57 4.38 25 University of Groningen 12 88 7.33 26 Purdue University 12 91 7.58 27 28 Louisiana State University Cranfield University 12 12 193 102 16.08 8.50 29 Concordia University Canada 12 68 5.67 30 Wageningen University Research Center 11 76 6.91 Cranfield University is the most productive university in this journal between 1990 and 2014, although the University of Cambridge is more influential The Top is constituted only by British universities, while the Top 30 has twenty-four European universities (including sixteen UK universities), four from the USA, one from Asia and one from Australia Table 12 depicts the performance of the Top 30 universities in the Journal of Quality Technology This journal is dominated by American institutions with twenty-four in the Top 30 The Top 30 has only two from Canada and one each from Hong Kong, Singapore, Belgium, and Netherlands Table 13 lists Top 30 universities in POM The top 30 has twenty-seven universities from the USA, two from 123 Hong Kong and one from Canada Note that there is no European university in the Top 30 Table 14 displays the Top 30 universities in the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management The National University of Singapore is most productive university followed by four American universities The Top 30 has 25 universities from the USA, two from Canada, and one each from the UK and Hong Kong The Top 30 most productive universities in Production Planning and Control are listed in Table 15 The Top 30 has seventeen European universities and only two American universities Two Asian universities, the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, perform remarkably in the fourth and fifth positions in the table Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 16 Total Quality Management & Business Excellence R Institution Chung Hua University 22 151 6.86 National Cheng Kung University 21 201 9.57 Linkoping University 18 89 4.94 University of Piraeus 16 82 5.13 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 16 75 4.69 Aarhus University 15 47 3.13 Lulea University of Technology 14 58 4.14 Indian Statistical Institute 14 69 4.93 University of Girona 13 108 8.31 10 National Central University 13 108 8.31 11 12 University of Coimbra National Taiwan University 12 12 69 83 5.75 6.92 13 Chung Yuan Christian University 12 118 9.83 14 University of Kent 11 65 5.91 15 Stockholm School of Economics 11 39 3.55 16 National Chin Yi University of Technology 11 46 4.18 17 National Chiao Tung University 11 47 4.27 18 Massey University 11 32 2.91 19 Lund University 11 111 10.09 20 City University of Hong Kong 11 55 5.00 21 Yuan Ze University 10 66 6.60 22 Hong Kong Polytechnic University 10 50 5.00 23 Chalmers University of Technology 10 14 1.40 24 University of Granada 55 6.11 25 University of Bradford 80 8.89 26 National Yunlin University Science Technology 89 9.89 27 28 National Sun Yat Sen University National Chung Cheng University 9 78 41 8.67 4.56 29 University of Manchester 24 3 30 University of Birmingham 50 6.25 Table 16 shows that sixteen Asian universities dominate the journal Total Quality Management and Business Excellence Twelve Taiwanese universities performed notably to get ranked in the Top 30 There is no American university in the Top 30 Table 17 depicts the Top 30 most productive universities in the International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing CNRS France leads in this journal The Top 30 has fifteen universities from Asia, six universities from the USA and seven universities from Europe Table 18 shows the Top 30 most productive universities in the Journal of Manufacturing Systems The University of Michigan leads this ranking, which is far greater than the second position obtained by Penn State University The USA again leads this journal The Top 30 has twenty-two universities from the USA The journals that have been TP TC H TC/TP discussed so far published 100% POM articles Table 19 presents the Top 10 most productive universities in the 11 selected top ranked journals These journals published POM articles but did not only publish them American universities completely dominate the Top 10 positions of the following journals: Management Science, Decision Sciences, and the Journal of Business Logistics and Manufacturing Service Operations Management Universities from the UK dominate Supply Chain Management: An International Journal Asian universities are dominant in Expert Systems with Applications, the Omega International Journal of Management Science, and Computers and Industrial Engineering On the other hand, a wider range is seen in the European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review and in the International Journal of 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 17 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing R Institution CNRS France 73 470 12 6.44 Loughborough University 64 524 12 8.19 University of Hong Kong 46 441 12 9.59 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 29 146 5.03 University of Bath 28 248 8.86 Purdue University 28 356 10 12.71 Pohang University of Science Technology 23 188 8.17 National Institute of Standards Technology USA 21 259 12.33 National Cheng Kung University 19 191 10.05 10 City University of Hong Kong 18 113 6.28 11 12 New Jersey Institute of Technology Nanyang Technological University 17 17 66 106 3.88 6.24 13 Hong Kong Polytechnic University 17 97 5.71 14 University of Patras 16 155 9.69 15 Tsinghua University 16 82 5.13 16 National Tsing Hua University 16 79 4.94 17 National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 15 69 4.60 18 National Chiao Tung University 15 84 5.60 19 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 15 100 6.67 20 Cranfield University 15 102 6.80 21 University of Auckland 14 143 10.21 22 University of Nottingham 13 60 4.62 23 Guangdong University of Technology 13 42 3.23 24 Chung Yuan Christian University 13 73 5.62 25 Arizona State University 13 116 8.92 26 Wichita State University 12 70 5.83 27 28 University of Windsor University of North Carolina 12 12 82 68 6.83 5.67 29 University of Lorraine 12 135 11.25 30 Penn State University 12 142 11.83 Physical Distribution Logistics Management The next table presents the information of the twenty-five most cited research papers in other research works Table 20 provides information about the mostly relevant topics in POM, which will in turn help young researchers to choose research topics and plan future research agendas The article entitled ‘‘Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm’’ written by R.M Grant of Georgetown University is leading the table by a wide margin Grant (1996) recognized the most important role of the firm as integrating the specialist knowledge resident in individuals into goods and services This work suggested that the primary task of firm management is establishing the coordination necessary for this knowledge integration The article entitled ‘‘the capabilities of market-driven organizations’’ written by George S Day of the University of Pennsylvania is 123 TP TC H TC/TP ranked second Stanford University is the origin of the research article, which is ranked third Note that the top three have more than one thousand citations and the USA is the country of origin of all these articles During the 25 years, researchers highly focused on topics such as knowledge-sharing management, information sharing management, and supply chain management Mapping the Leading Universities with VOS Viewer Another important issue to consider is the bibliographic influence that each university has and the bibliographic network formed around its publications and citations A tool for doing so is bibliographic coupling It is defined as a measure that considers the number of times two different studies reference a common third work in their Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 18 Journal of Manufacturing Systems R Institution University of Michigan Penn State University University of California Berkeley TC H 39 356 10 9.13 24 182 7.58 19 291 15.32 Korea Advanced Institute of Science Technology 19 299 15.74 General Motors Company 18 149 8.28 Auburn University 18 419 23.28 University of Windsor 17 106 6.24 Purdue University 17 301 10 17.71 University of Tehran 14 116 8.29 10 Texas AM University College Station 14 92 6.57 11 12 University of Wisconsin Madison University of North Carolina 13 12 198 145 15.23 12.08 13 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 12 187 15.58 14 Islamic Azad University 12 78 6.50 15 Bradley University 11 34 3.09 16 University of Pittsburgh 77 8.56 17 University of Maryland College Park 142 15.78 18 National University of Singapore 47 5.22 19 Iran University Science Technology 42 4.67 20 Arizona State University 50 5.56 21 University of Wisconsin Milwaukee 107 13.38 22 University of Texas Austin 100 12.50 23 University of Iowa 104 13.00 24 University of Cincinnati 199 24.88 25 Ohio State University 70 8.75 26 Iowa State University 101 12.63 27 28 Virginia Polytechnic Institute University of Skovde 7 19 27 2.71 3.86 29 University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 35 5.00 30 University of Connecticut 43 6.14 bibliographies (Kessler 1963; Martyn 1964) If we apply this concept to universities, we consider the number of times that two documents from different institutions cite a common third article This approach allows us to simultaneously identify the bibliographic references that different institutions have in common and see how relevant they are in this field Figure presents the bibliographic coupling of the leading universities in the five thousand most cited papers in production and operations management between 1990 and 2014 As we can see, American universities form the core of the field Most of these universities appear in Table However, Asian institutions also have an important presence in the field Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the National University of Singapore also form an important core in this area British universities are less TP TC/TP significant, although they also form some important cores around the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick, and the University of Manchester Note that Fig is presented using a density visualization of the results Figure presents the network visualization of bibliographic coupling Figures and 6, respectively, present the network visualization of the citation and co-authorship analyses of universities with a minimum threshold of twenty documents and the one hundred most representative connections The performances of Michigan State University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Arizona State University, and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities are significant in both the co-citation and co-author indicators American universities again perform notably in these fields 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 19 Top 10 universities in the eleven selected journals Journal Supply Chain Management An International Journal Manufacturing Service Operations Management International Journal of Physical Distribution Logistics Management R Institution Transportation Research Part E Logistics and Transportation Review 123 H TC/TP Cranfield University UK 22 190 8.64 Cardiff University UK 20 251 10 12.55 University of Melbourne AUS 12 298 24.83 Aalto University FIN 11 64 5.82 University of Birmingham UK 10 202 20.20 University of Warwick UK 129 14.33 University of Kent UK 99 11.00 University of Hull UK 114 12.67 University of Bath UK 77 8.56 145 10 Hong Kong Polytechnic Uni CHN Columbia University Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill USA USA 27 24 University of Pennsylvania USA Stanford University USA University of Michigan USA 19 Northwestern University USA 18 Georgia Institute of Technology USA 17 Univ California Los Angeles USA Duke University USA 10 INSEAD Business School University of Tennessee Knoxville Cranfield University Lund University Chalmers University of Technology SWE 12 56 4.67 Auburn University USA 11 98 8.91 Whu-Otto Beisheim School of Management GER 43 4.78 University of Southern Denmark DEN 71 7.89 University of North Texas Denton USA 148 16.44 University of North Carolina USA 100 12.50 USA 76 9.50 10 University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Journal of Business Logistics Country TP TC 16.11 393 12 379 11 14.56 15.79 23 352 11 15.30 20 185 9.25 203 10.68 126 7.00 211 12.41 16 262 16.38 16 174 10.88 USA 14 103 7.36 USA 16 255 15.94 UK SWE 16 14 142 48 8.88 3.43 University of Arkansas Fayetteville USA 33 154 4.67 Ohio State University USA 28 278 10 9.93 University of Tennessee Knoxville USA 27 343 12.70 Michigan State University Weber State University USA USA 18 12 109 36 6.06 3.00 University of North Carolina USA 140 15.56 University of Oklahoma USA 166 20.75 University of Alabama Tuscaloosa USA 72 9.00 Copenhagen Business School DEN 62 7.75 10 Colorado State University USA 47 5.88 Univ Maryland College Park USA 42 813 15 19.36 National University of Singapore SGP 34 599 16 17.62 University of British Columbia UK 32 269 10 8.41 University of Sydney AUS 27 427 11 15.81 University of California Berkeley National Chiao Tung University USA TWN 26 23 436 11 533 10 16.77 23.17 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 19 continued Journal European Journal of Operational Research R Institution Country TP TC Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ CHN 23 548 11 Iowa State University USA 21 185 8.81 National Cheng Kung Univ TWN 17 217 12.76 10 Hong Kong Univ Sci Tech CHN 17 196 11.53 CNRS France FRA 40 582 13 14.55 Erasmus University Rotterdam NET 29 2128 21 73.38 Hong Kong Polytechnic University CHN 27 1201 16 44.48 Eindhoven University of Technology NET 26 742 17 28.54 KU Leuven BEL 23 949 13 41.26 University of Florida USA 22 640 10 29.09 National University of Singapore SGP 20 332 11 16.60 City University of Hong Kong HK 20 640 12 32.00 CAN TWN 17 17 429 424 13 25.24 24.94 86.49 University of Montreal 10 National Cheng Kung University Management Science Decision Sciences Omega International Journal of Management Science 23.83 University of Pennsylvania USA 37 3200 25 Stanford University USA 29 3404 21 117.38 INSEAD Business School USA 26 1711 18 65.81 Carnegie Mellon University USA 18 1043 14 57.94 Northwestern University USA 17 1402 12 82.47 Columbia University USA 17 1149 14 67.59 University of Michigan USA 16 837 12 52.31 Univ California Los Angeles USA 15 1387 12 92.47 Massachusetts Institute Technology USA 15 1467 12 97.80 USA 14 46.21 10 Harvard University Expert Systems with Applications H TC/TP 647 11 Hong Kong Polytechnic University CHN 47 680 14 14.47 National Chiao Tung University TWN 22 426 11 19.36 City University of Hong Kong CHN 17 224 13.18 National Taipei University Tech National Taiwan Univ Sci Tech TWN TWN 16 15 160 307 7 10.00 20.47 National Cheng Kung University TWN 13 144 11.08 National Tsing Hua University TWN 12 98 8.17 Yonsei University KOR 11 80 7.27 University of Hong Kong CHN 11 225 20.45 10 Tamkang University TWN 10 125 12.50 Michigan State University USA 28 1174 16 41.93 Ohio State University USA 20 497 12 24.85 University of South Carolina USA 16 424 12 26.50 Clemson University USA 16 496 12 31.00 Univ Minnesota Twin Cities USA 15 710 11 47.33 Texas AM Uni College Station USA 13 311 23.92 University of North Carolina USA 12 682 11 56.83 Indiana University Bloomington USA 12 254 21.17 285 IU Kelley School of Business USA 10 Arizona State University Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ USA CHN 12 Cardiff University UK National University of Singapore SGP Chinese University of Hong Kong CHN 31.67 332 484 11 41.5 40.33 118 14.75 124 20.67 154 25.67 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 19 continued Journal R Institution Country TP TC H TC/TP University of Bradford UK 92 18.40 Tsinghua University CHN 77 15.40 National Cheng Kung University TWN 73 14.60 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi IND 203 40.60 Drexel University USA 103 20.60 37 10 CNRS France FRA 7.40 Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ CHN 12 484 11 40.33 City University of Hong Kong CHN 12 126 10.5 CNRS France FRA 12 66 5.5 Ryerson University CAN 10 145 14.5 National Taiwan U Sci Tech TWN 10 129 12.9 Waseda University University of North Carolina JAP USA 9 307 59 34.11 6.56 National Tsing Hua University TWN 39 4.33 University of Tehran IRA 113 14.12 Hong Kong Polytechnic Uni Computers & Industrial Engineering 10 Hanyang University CHN 101 12.62 KOR 216 27 Table 20 The 25 most cited documents in POM from 1990 to 2014 Strategic Management Journal 2938 Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm Grant, RM 1996 163.2 Journal of Marketing 1424 The capabilities of market-driven organizations Day, GS 1994 71.2 Management Science 1336 Information distortion in a supply chain: the bullwhip effect Lee, HL; Padmanabhan, V; 1997 Whang, SJ 78.6 Harvard Business Review Strategic Management Journal 990 What is strategy? Porter, ME 1996 55.0 883 Creating and managing a high-performance knowledgesharing network: The Toyota case Dyer, JH; Nobeoka, K 2000 63.1 American Economic Review 767 The effects of human resource management practices on productivity: A study of steel finishing lines Ichniowski, C; Shaw, K; Prennushi, G 1997 45.1 Research Policy 740 The role of product architecture in the manufacturing firm Ulrich, K 1995 38.9 Harvard Business Review 670 What is the right supply chain for your product? Fisher, ML 1997 39.4 Academy of Management Review 665 Exploitation, exploration, and process management: The productivity dilemma revisited Benner, MJ; Tushman, ML 2003 60.5 10 Management Science 645 The value of information sharing in a two-level supply chain Lee, HL; So, KC; Tang, CS 2000 46.1 11 Industrial & Labor Relations Review 637 How common is workplace transformation and who adopts it Osterman, P 1994 31.9 12 Academy of Management Journal 635 International expansion by new venture firms: International Zahra, SA; Ireland, RD; diversity, mode of market entry, technological learning, and Hitt, MA performance 2000 45.4 13 Management Science 624 Quantifying the bullwhip effect in a simple supply chain: The Chen, F; Drezner, Z; Ryan, 2000 impact of forecasting, lead times, and information JK; et al 44.6 14 Strategic Management Journal 613 Total quality management as competitive advantage—a review and empirical study Powell, TC 1995 32.3 15 Organization Science 602 A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: Boundary objects in new product development Carlile, PR 2002 50.2 16 Administrative Science Quarterly 597 Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change Feldman, MS; Pentland, BT 2003 54.3 17 European Journal of Operational Research 595 Quantitative models for reverse logistics: A review Fleischmann, M; Bloemhof 1997 Ruwaard, JM; Dekker, R; et al 35.0 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Table 20 continued 18 European Journal of Operational Research 555 Vendor Selection Criteria And Methods Weber, CA; Current, JR; Benton, WC 1991 24.1 19 Journal of Management Information Systems 552 Knowledge management: An organizational capabilities perspective Gold, AH; Malhotra, A; Segars, AH 2001 42.5 20 Journal of Applied Psychology 549 Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team De Dreu, CKW; Weingart, 2003 member satisfaction: a meta-analysis LR 49.9 21 International Journal of Operations & Production Management 541 Case research in operations management Voss, C; Tsikriktsis, N; Frohlich, M 2002 45.1 22 Management Science 534 Supply chain inventory management and the value of shared Cachon, GP; Fisher, M information 2000 38.1 23 Journal of Operations Management 512 Arcs of integration: an international study of supply chain strategies Frohlich, MT; Westbrook, R 2001 39.4 24 International Journal of Production Economics 511 Supply chain design and analysis: Models and methods Beamon, BM 1998 31.9 25 Management Science 501 The impact of environmental management on firm performance Klassen, RD; McLaughlin, CP 1996 27.8 Fig Bibliographic coupling of the leading universities in production and operations management Conclusions This study has presented a general overview of the most productive and influential universities between 1990 and 2014 in production and operations management The results are extracted from the WoS database, which is usually regarded as the most influential for scientific research The findings of the article indicate that production and operations management has more distribution than other management fields because universities from all over the world are leading the discipline In management and social sciences, this is quite uncommon, and usually 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Fig Network visualization of the bibliographic coupling of leading universities in POM English-speaking countries hold a dominant position The main explanation for this is that production and operations management are close to more technical fields such as engineering and operations research where the current research is led by institutions from a wide range of countries and not only by English-speaking countries This work provides a snapshot of the most productive universities in POM This is very useful for PhD students and newcomers in order to identify places where there is strong activity in POM For example, this could be useful for planning a potential research visit at one of the most productive institutions in the field From Table 20, one can easily see the high impact research topics of POM For instance, one may consider the following research topics for future research: knowledge-based theory, the capabilities of market-driven organizations, the bullwhip effect in supply 123 chain, the knowledge-sharing network, human resource management, product architecture, supply chain selection, information sharing, total quality management, reverse logistics, vendor selection, inventory management, supply chain strategies, environmental management, Big Data and Predictive Analytics, and other technological innovations Focusing on the results, Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the most productive university, although Michigan State University is the most influential one according to the total number of citations Currently, North America, Europe and East Asia have a similar level of significant research in this area as seen from the number of institutions that appear in the ranking Temporal analysis reveals that Asian universities are developing rapidly and capturing increasingly more positions in the list of top universities Another interesting result is that the Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Fig Network visualization of the citations of leading universities in POM Fig Network visualization of co-author of leading universities in POM 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management universities tend to publish more in their local top journals with the USA being the dominant leader in the Journal of Operations Management, the Journal of Quality Technology, Production and Operations Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and the Journal of Manufacturing Systems; Europe in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management and Production Planning and Control; Asia in Total Quality Management and Business Excellence and the International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing; and a wider dispersion is seen in the International Journal of Production Research and in the International Journal of Production Economics The trends for the future indicate that the dispersion will continue with the appearance of more universities from developing countries A first indication of this is that some Indian Institutes of Technologies have already entered the lists Note that these institutes has several locations in different Indian cities Nevertheless, it is remarkable that IIT Delhi and Madras entered several rankings In the future, we will deepen the analysis by expanding the rankings to a bigger list of universities and including more journals in the analysis Some other bibliometric techniques will also be considered, such as the co-occurrence of author keywords and citation networks Acknowledgements The authors are thankful to the editor-in-chief Prof Sushil and the anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful suggestions to improve the quality of the paper The second author is always grateful to Shri Bibhas Chandra Das for giving enormous support and care Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of interest No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors Appendix See Table 21 Table 21 Most influential POM Journals TC H TC/ TP [ 200 [ 100 [ 50 R Journal TP International Journal of Production Research 6816 78,383 78 11.5 37 232 International Journal of Production Economics 5018 69,061 79 13.76 10 43 240 Journal of Operations Management 662 27,966 90 42.24 14 72 178 International Journal of Operations and Production Management Journal of Quality Technology IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management Production and Operations Management Production Planning and Control Total Quality Management and Business Excellence 1789 9446 32 5.28 0 10 International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 1401 8715 32 6.22 0 10 11 Journal of Manufacturing Systems 925 8001 37 8.65 19 12 Supply Chain Management An International Journal 561 6601 36 11.77 21 13 Manufacturing Service Operations Management 357 3599 29 10.08 14 International Journal of Physical Distribution Logistics Management 332 2222 21 6.69 15 Journal of Business Logistics 201 1641 21 8.16 0 1528 25,463 68 16.66 25 101 97 955 18,688 70 19.57 37 1270 16,645 51 13.11 14 52 894 13,554 56 15.16 26 63 22 1583 11,279 40 7.13 Most influencing other POM Journals (not 100%) 16 European Journal of Operational Research 17 Management Science 18 Transportation Research Part E Logistics And Transportation Review 19 Expert Systems With Applications 630 7603 39 12.07 27 20 Decision Sciences 234 6863 43 29.33 15 39 21 Omega International Journal of Management Science 299 6454 41 21.59 29 22 Computers & Industrial Engineering 522 5157 35 20 123 1229 29,618 77 24.1 12 52 140 291 19,412 74 66.71 17 57 105 11 54 1143 14,412 51 12.61 9.88 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management References Barman, S., Hanna, M D., & LaForge, R L (2001) Perceived relevance and quality of POM journals: A decade later Journal of Operations Management, 19, 367–385 Barman, S., Tersine, R J., & Buckley, M R (1991) An empirical assessment of the perceived relevance and quality of POMrelated journals by academicians Journal of Operations Management, 10, 194–212 Blanco-Mesa, F., Merigo´, J M., & Gil-Lafuente, A M (2017) Fuzzy decision making: A bibliometric-based review Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, 32, 2033–2050 Boehmke, B C., & Hazen, B T (2017) The future of supply chain information systems: The open source ecosystem Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 18(2), 163–168 Bonilla, C A., Merigo´, J M., & Torres-Abad, C (2015) Economics in Latin America: A bibliometric analysis Scientometrics, 105(2), 1239–1252 Broadus, R N (1987) Toward a definition of ‘‘Bibliometrics’’ Scientometrics, 12, 373–379 Cancino, C., Merigo´, J M., Coronado, F., Dessouky, Y., & Dessouky, M (2017) Forty years of computers & industrial engineering: A bibliometric analysis Computers & Industrial Engineering, 113, 614–629 Franceschini, S., Faria, L G., & Jurowetzki, R (2016) Unveiling scientific communities about sustainability and innovation A bibliometric journey around sustainable terms Journal of Cleaner Production, 127, 72–83 Garg, R K., & Singh, T P (2006) Management of change-a comprehensive review Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 7(1/2), 45–60 Goh, C H., Holsapple, C W., Johnson, L E., & Tanner, J R (1997) Evaluating and classifying POM journals Journal of Operations Management, 15, 123–138 Gonza´lez-Benito, J., Lannelongue, G., & Alfaro-Tanco, J A (2013) Study of supply-chain management in the automotive industry: A bibliometric analysis International Journal of Production Research, 51(13), 3849–3863 Grant, R M (1996) Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm Strategic Management Journal, 17(S2), 109–122 Grover, P., & Kar, A K (2017) Big data analytics: A review on theoretical contributions and tools used in literature Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 18(3), 203–229 Haleem, A., Kumar, S., & Luthra, S (2018) Flexible system approach for understanding requisites of product innovation management Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 19(1), 19–37 Hirsch, J E (2005) An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 16569–16572 Holsapple, C W., & Lee-Post, A (2010) Behavior-based analysis of knowledge dissemination channels in operations management Omega, 38, 167–178 Hsieh, P N., & Chang, P L (2009) An assessment of world-wide research productivity in production and operations management International Journal of Production Economics, 120, 540–551 Kazemi, N., Modak, N M., & Govindan, K (2018) A review of reverse logistics and closed loop supply chain management studies published in IJPR: A bibliometric and content analysis International Journal of Production Research https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2018.1471244 Kessler, M M (1963) Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers American Documentation, 14, 10–25 Ketchen, D J., Jr., & Hult, G T M (2007) Toward greater integration of insights from organization theory and supply chain management Journal of Operations Management, 25(2), 455–458 Kulkarni, S., Verma, P., & Mukundan, R (2016) Extending canvas of manufacturing strategy: 8Ps model International Journal of Global Business and Competitiveness, 11(1), 7–21 Laengle, S., Merigo´, J M., Miranda, J., Slowinski, R., Bomze, I., Borgonovo, E., et al (2017) Forty years of the European Journal of Operational Research: A bibliometric overview European Journal of Operational Research, 262, 803–816 Laengle, S., Merigo´, J M., Modak, N M., & Yang, J B (2018a) Bibliometrics in operations research and management science: A university analysis Annals of Operations Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-018-3017-6 Laengle, S., Modak, N M., Merigo´, J M., & De La Sotta, C (2018b) Thirty years of the International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing: A bibliometric analysis International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 31(12), 1247–1268 Laengle, S., Modak, N M., Merigo, J M., & Zurita, G (2018c) Twenty-five years of group decision and negotiation: A bibliometric overview Group Decision and Negotiation, 27(4), 505542 Landstroăm, H., Harirchi, G., & Astroăm, F (2012) Entrepreneurship: Exploring the knowledge base Research Policy, 41(7), 1154–1181 Malaviya, P., & Wadhwa, S (2005) Innovation management in organizational context: an empirical study Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 6(2), 1–14 Martı´nez-Lo´pez, F J., Merigo´, J M., Valenzuela, L., & Nicola´s, C (2018) Fifty years of the European Journal of Marketing: A bibliometric analysis European Journal of Marketing, 52, 439–468 Martyn, J (1964) Bibliographic coupling Journal of Documentation, 20(4), 236 Mas-Tur, A., Modak, N M., Merigo´, J M., Roig-Tierno, N., Geraci, M., & Capecchi, V (2018) Half a century of Quality & Quantity: A bibliometric review Quality & Quantity https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-018-0799-1 Merigo´, J M., Cancino, C., Coronado, F., & Urbano, D (2016) Academic research in innovation: A country analysis Scientometrics, 108(2), 559–593 Merigo´, J M., Gil-Lafuente, A M., & Yager, R R (2015a) An overview of fuzzy research with bibliometric indicators Applied Soft Computing, 27, 420–433 Merigo´, J M., Mas-Tur, A., Roig-Tierno, N., & Ribeiro-Soriano, D (2015b) A bibliometric overview of the Journal of Business Research between 1973 and 2014 Journal of Business Research, 68(12), 2645–2653 Merigo´, J M., & Yang, J B (2017) A bibliometric analysis of operations research and management science Omega, 73, 37–48 Musa, A., & Dabo, A A A (2016) A review of RFID in supply chain management: 2000–2015 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 17(2), 189–228 Pilkington, A., & Meredith, J (2009) The evolution of the intellectual structure of operations management—1980–2006: A citation/co-citation analysis Journal of Operations Management, 27, 185–202 Podsakoff, P M., MacKenzie, S B., Podsakoff, N P., & Bachrach, D G (2008) Scholarly influence in the field of management: A bibliometric analysis of the determinants of university and author impact in the management literature in the past quarter century Journal of Management, 34, 641–720 Shang, G., Saladin, B., Fry, T., & Donohue, J (2015) Twenty-six years of operations management research (1985–2010): Authorship patterns and research constituents in eleven top rated journals International Journal of Production Research, 53(20), 6161–6197 123 Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Small, H (1973) Co-citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two documents Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 24, 265–269 Stonebraker, J S., Gil, E., Kirkwood, C W., & Handfield, R B (2012) Impact factor as a metric to assess journals where OM research is published Journal of Operations Management, 30, 24–43 Valenzuela, L., Merigo´, J M., Johnston, W., Nicola´s, C., & Jaramillo, J F (2017) Thirty years of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing: A bibliometric analysis Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 32, 1–18 Van Eck, N J., & Waltman, L (2010) Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping Scientometrics, 84, 523–538 Veugelers, R., Del Rey, E (2014) The contribution of universities to innovation (regional) growth and employment EENEE Analytical Report No 18 Wagstaff, A., & Culyer, A J (2012) Four decades of health economics through a bibliometric lens Journal of Health Economics, 31(2), 406–439 Wong, B K., & Lai, V S (2011) A survey of the application of fuzzy set theory in production and operations management: 1998–2009 International Journal of Production Economics, 129(1), 157–168 Zhong, S., Geng, Y., Liu, W., Gao, C., & Chen, W (2016) A bibliometric review on natural resource accounting during 1995–2014 Journal of Cleaner Production, 139, 122–132 Key Questions Which universities are the most productive and influential in POM research? How have the influence and productivity of universities changed throughout time? Which universities are leading in the most influential POM Journals? How have universities from different continents and countries contributed to POM research? How have leading universities formed the bibliographic network around its publications and citations? Jose´ M Merigo´ is a Professor at the School of Systems, Management and Leadership at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney (Australia) and at the Department of Management Control and Information Systems at the University of Chile Previously, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester (UK) and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Administration at the University of Barcelona (Spain) He holds a Master’s and a PhD degree in Business Administration from the University of Barcelona He also holds a Bachelor degree of Science and of Social Sciences in Economics and a Master in European Business Administration and Business Law from Lund University (Sweden) He has published more than 400 articles in journals, books and conference proceedings, including journals such as Information Sciences, the European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Knowledge-Based Systems He has also published several books including seven with Springer and two with World Scientific 123 He is on the editorial board of several journals including Applied Soft Computing, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Technological and Economic Development of the Economy, the Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, Kybernetes, the International Journal of Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Latin America Transactions and Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies and Research He has also been a guest editor for several international journals, a member of the scientific committee of several conferences and a reviewer for a wide range of international journals Recently, Clarivate Analytics (previously Thomson & Reuters) has distinguished him as a Highly Cited Researcher in Computer Science He is currently interested in Decision Making, Aggregation Operators, Computational Intelligence, Bibliometrics and Applications in Business and Economics Claudio Muller holds a Ph.D in Business Economics from the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) He also holds an MBA from Sellinger School of Business at Loyola University in Maryland (USA) and a BSc in Industrial Engineering Management from the Technical University Federico Santa Maria (Chile) He also has a Certificate in Entrepreneurship for Educators from Babson College (USA) Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Management Control and Information Systems at the School of Economics and Business at the University of Chile Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Desarrollo (Chile) He has published several papers in journals, books and conference proceedings He has been guest editor of several journals and has participated in a wide range of conference and journal activities He is currently interested in family business, innovation, entrepreneurship, firm behavior, governance mechanisms, operations and quality management, and bibliometrics Dr Nikunja Mohan Modak received his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Mathematics from the University of Kalyani, Kalyani, West Bengal, India Currently, he is an assistant teacher of mathematics in Palpara Vidyamandir, Chakdaha, Nadia, West Bengal, India He is a lifetime member of the Indian Science Congress and Operational Research Society of India (ORSI) He won the Prof B.G Raghabendra Memorial Award for the best paper at the 45th Annual Convention of ORSI in 2012 He has received the best reviewer award in 2014 from the International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management His research interests cover the areas of inventory management, game theory, supply chain management and bibliometric study He has published more than 35 articles in international journals such as the International Journal of Production Economics, the European Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of Cleaner Production, the Annals of OR, the International Journal of Production Research, Group Decision and Negotiation, Applied Mathematics and Computation, the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, the International Journal of Logistics, IJCIM, Control & Cybernetics, the International Journal of Operational Research, the International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management He is currently interested in Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Bibliometrics and Applications in Business and Economics Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management Sigifredo Laengle received his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in economic theory from the University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany, and his Master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile He is a Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Chile He has published papers in journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, including journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, the European Journal of Operational Research, Group Decision and Negotiation, the International Journal of Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based Systems, the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, the Central European Journal of Operations Research, Optimization Letters and IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, and the Canadian Mining Journal He has participated in the scientific committees of several conferences and associations and serves as a reviewer for a range of international journals 123